Visual analogue scales (VAS): Measuring instruments for the documentation of symptoms and therapy monitoring in cases of allergic rhinitis in everyday health care

Abstract

BackroundVisual analogue scales (VAS) are psychometric measuring instruments designed to document the characteristics of disease-related symptom severity in individual patients and use this to achieve a rapid (statistically measurable and reproducible) classification of symptom severity and disease control. VAS can also be used in routine patient history taking and to monitor the course of a chronic disease such as allergic rhinitis (AR). More specifically, the VAS has been used to assess effectiveness of AR therapy in real life, both in intermittent and persistent disease.MethodsThis position paper takes a detailed look at the historical development of VAS and its method-specific principles. Particular focus is put on aspects of practical application in daily routine and on a critical discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the individual methods.ResultsVAS are well validated for the measurement of AR symptoms and correlate well with the ARIA (allergic rhinitis and its impact on asthma) severity classification and also correlated well with rTNSS and RQLQ. Moreover, several treatment studies on AR have used VAS as an evaluation parameter. Thanks to the use of new (real-life and real-time) communication technologies, such as smartphone apps, Discussion: VAS can be used relatively simply and highly effectively to assess disease control. The VAS lends itself very well to digitization and has now been incorporated into a smartphone app (called Allergy Diary) to assess AR control and direct treatment decisions as part of an AR clinical decision support system (CDSS). MASK Rhinitis has developed this app, which is currently available in 15 different languages.

Visual analogue scale for sino-nasal symptoms severity correlates with sino-nasal outcome test 22: paving the way for a simple outcome tool of CRS burden

“…Recently, the same cut-off points were used in mySinusitisCoach, an app for patients with CRS developed by medical experts in the field, to assess the level of disease control [23]. The weak correlation observed in the intermediate intervals (VAS > 2 and ≤ 5) could be explained by the halo effect, which may be noticed when several items are to be evaluated with different types of scales [11]. …”

“…Originally designed to evaluate workers productivity by senior personnel, VAS gained more attention in the sixties in medicine, social science, and market research [11]. It represents a horizontal line of 10 cm with word anchors at each end representing the extreme feelings.…”

“…Patients are instructed to indicate the point on the line that best corresponds to their status for the particular characteristic being evaluated. In addition to its high sensitivity, reliability and reproducibility, VAS is easy and simple to use by patients and health care providers [11]. It also does not require training, making VAS a highly valuable tool not only for everyday clinical practice, but also for real-life studies [11].…”

Real‐life effectiveness of MP‐AzeFlu in Irish patients with persistent allergic rhinitis, assessed by visual analogue scale and endoscopy

“…Although some differences in data reporting and baseline characteristics were noted, the results of this study are consistent with the findings of the same NIS conducted in Sweden 20. Sleep impairment has been well established as a debilitating symptom associated with AR21, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26; therefore, the improvement in sleep quality with MP‐AzeFlu observed in these real‐world studies has the potential to greatly improve AR patients’ quality of life.…”

The Characteristics of Severe Chronic Upper-Airway Disease (SCUAD) in Patients with Allergic Rhinitis: A Real-Life Multicenter Cross-Sectional Italian Study

“…To test for heterogeneity, i.e., whether the estimated prevalence in all centers is the same, meta-analysis was performed. Heterogeneity is also quantified using the I-squared measure [11]. In the case of significant heterogeneity, all analyses were successively performed considering each center as a cluster random sample and adjusting consequently standard errors (SE) of the estimates.…”